Tuesday morning at city council, details of an aboriginal girl’s life played out as a prelude to the latest Vancouver report on homelessness and two days of discussion about poverty and means to alleviate it.
It would include approval by council Wednesday of the city becoming the biggest public sector “living wage” employer in the province. It commits them to guaranteeing a minimum wage for not just city employees, but the city’s contractors of $20.68 per hour including benefits.
In that, Vancouver joined New Westminster and 45 other employers in the province as well as some 200 cities south of the border.
There was a debate about protecting SRO hotel rooms by increasing the penalty for developers who wanted to remove them from the inventory of space available for people on social assistance and convert them to more expensive digs. And there was the introduction of the next phase in Vancouver’s Healthy City Strategy.
But to kick it off, British Columbia’s Representative for Youth, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, recounted the life of Paige, an aboriginal youth in the care of the government who over the last two and a half years of her life was shuffled about from shelters, to safe houses to SROs some 50 times. She was the subject of more than 40 police reports and 17 trips to the emergency ward and the victim of the survival sex trade before she finally died of a drug overdose.
While aboriginal people make up about eight per cent of the province’s population, they represent half of the children and youth in government care and 36 per cent of children and youth who are homeless.
Homeless count surveys, done by the city since 2005, show the number of children and youth without homes, up to the age of 24, has changed very little. As a percentage it has even increased slightly since the count in 2014.
During her eight years on the job, Turpel-Lafond has been critical of a system that “spits out” youngsters at the age of 19. She has been part of an ongoing discussion taking place all across North America that is promoting the notion that the current policy puts too many of these kids on a road similar to the one Paige found herself on. And she shares the view that government care should continue to age 24, which was a view endorsed by council.
Her principal criticism is directed at the province and, in particular, the lack of what she calls “secure care” which would be an organized program to assist kids in care who need help with everything from mental issues to addiction. Six of the provinces in Canada, she notes, have such programs. She says in B.C. care doled out by the provincial government is a “scattershot approach.” And she adds: “We have the expertise in British Columbia; we have chosen not to use it.”
She also says the city is limited in what it can accomplish on its own. Agencies on the Downtown Eastside are overwhelmed. “They don’t have the capacity to do it.”
As harsh as Turpel-Lafond’s criticism of the province may be, she does almost grudgingly admits there have some improvements: “A few small programs have been created during my time.”
Most significantly 11 of B.C.’s 25 post-secondary institutions including UBC and SFU have “stepped up” to offer kids in care free tuition to continue their education.
Folks who agree with raising the age for youth in care to 24 point out it takes more than just changing the age. It requires a complex series of inter-ministerial changes to provide the many services at the provincial level.
Krista Thompson, the executive director of Covenant House in Vancouver, which had 1,400 kids come through its doors last year, adds a couple of other points, first noting her organization’s mandate is to care for youngsters between 16 and 24 years of age.
The streets of the Downtown Eastside are far more precarious than they were a generation or two ago because of the rise in the population of those preying on youngsters.
As well, there is the dramatic increase in the level of dangerous street drugs available.
And finally she say the “system needs to catch up with the reality of what kids are facing.”
Exactly.
@allengarr
